Doomer Optimism

Chris and Ashley speak with Dougald about his new book At Work in the Ruins and where it intersects with both the Small Farm Future and Doomer Optimism. Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, speaker and the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins (2023) and he publishes new essays on his Substack, Writing Home. https://linktr.ee/atworkintheruins His substack can be found at: https://dougald.substack.com/ Chris Smaje has coworked a small farm in Somerset, southwest England, for the last 17 years. Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey and the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College on aspects of social policy, social identities and the environment. Since switching focus to the practice and politics of agroecology, he's written for various publications, such as The Land , Dark Mountain , Permaculture magazine and Statistics Views, as well as academic journals such as Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and the Journal of Consumer Culture . Smaje writes the blog Small Farm Future, is a featured author at www.resilience.org and a current director of the Ecological Land Co-op. Chris' latest book is: A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth.

Ashley and Donald speak with Jane about her review of the book Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson and what being a homemaker means for modern women. ‌ Jane Psmith is a pseudonymous suburban housewife with four kids. She and her husband review books and write about knowledge, culture, and institutions at thepsmiths.substack.com. Her review of Home Comforts is here: https://thepsmiths.substack.com/p/review-home-comforts-by-cheryl-mendelson

Flávia Macêdo (@flaviagoma) and Jason have a conversation about her work in Brazil to create a local currency that reflects and reinforces values that aren't reflected in the fiat money system, her interest in collaborative food production and agroforestry, how her work interfaces with larger political structures, her work connecting with and building global support networks of like minded people that can help support local and bioregional regeneration, and her interest in the potential of AI   Despite the degree in Pharmacy, Flávia led her career as a writer and social entrepreneur. She is currently working as Community Builder at Muda Outras Economias, a social currency network, and Common Ground, a web3 native communication platform.   She is interested in the potential of technologies such as AI and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in supporting regenerative initiatives. She's the founder of SintropiaDAO, where she investigates and writes about global collective intelligence, relational practices, gift economy, and regenerative cultures.

In this episode Jason has a conversation with Dakotah Apostolou, CEO of Cohere Network @coherenetwork about their plans to build a global network of regenerative villages, their innovative and inclusive economic model, how they plan to collaborate with local populations, and much more Twitter thread describing what they are doing: https://twitter.com/coherenetwork/status/1506614056647598086 Bio:  A designer of buildings, communities and businesses, Dakotah's training at The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has informed his passion for using built environments to create regenerative systems that restore the health of ecosystems and communities.  Links:  Website: https://cohere.networkCohere Costa Rica: https://cohere.network/communities/lake-arenal…Cohere Berlin https://cohere.network/communities/berlin…Twitter: http://social.cohere.network/twitterInstagram: http://social.cohere.network/instagramDiscord: http://social.cohere.network/discordYoutube: http://social.cohere.network/youtubeLinkedIn: http://social.cohere.network/linkedinFacebook: http://social.cohere.network/facebookco:lab: https://cohere.network/x/lab/guatemalaMedium: https://medium.com/@coherenetwork

Two frequent guest/hosts sit down to try to hash out what the f#@k is going on with all this weird horseshoe politics business. But first they set the stage with a discussion of their beloved western trout and the beautiful places they reside. The chat moved to western ecologies, public lands, and James' book Chosen Country as well as his recent Vanity Fair article on the strange convergence of preppers, libertarians and revolutionaries in the wilds of the mountain west. The episode ends with a pretty solid conclusion that explains everything, but you’ll have to listen to find out. James Pogue @jhensonpogue is an American essayist and journalist. He is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. His pieces have appeared on the covers of Harper's and The American Conservative. He is the author of Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West, a first-person account of conflict over public lands in the American west. Nathan Gates is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.

-In this episode Jason has a conversation with Chris Jagger (@reggaj) and Viktor Zaunders (@zaunders) about the marketing and distribution (or post-farm) side of local and regenerative food systems. They discuss the various models, including farmer's markets, food hubs, CSAs, and cooperatives, the role of digital technology, and what the major challenges and opportunities are in building regenerative food systems and cultures from the ground up -Chris Jagger has been farming for 25 years (the last 20 years in southern Oregon). Chris’s main focus has been diversified commercial vegetable production but he also has experience with dairy animals, poultry, beef, pigs, hemp, perennials, and whole systems design. He is currently agricultural director for a state licensed cannabis farm and is bootstrapping an agricultural media company focusing on the crossroads between culture and farming. His number one goal with agriculture is stewarding soils back to health via proper nutrition and biology. Twitter: @reggaj Instagram: Bluefoxfarm -Viktor Zaunders has been working with software in service of place-based local regeneration for about a decade and has been a part of the Holochain ecosystem for about 4 years as a designer, communicator and architect. His main interest lies in enabling bioregional food webs and helping place-based groups to coordinate better. He wants to spark in interest in people around p2p technologies in order to lay the groundwork for a regenerative and thriving society that he hopes can replace our current degenerative civilisational patterns. He is also a mushroom farmer and whole village entrepreneur living in Röstånga, Skåne. Twitter: @zaunders https://darksoil.studio/ https://zaunders.medium.com/

Welcome to a Heartland edition of Doomer Optimism. Today Nate goes into the belly of the agribeast with Zach Smith and Jason Mauck. Representing the grain belt from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, the trio discusses the status quo in big agriculture, making a living from the land, and human scale innovation. A major question is how to scale back the total acreage of farms while increasing production and profit per acre, allowing prolific food production while making a livelihood in reach for smaller, more management intensive farms. We discuss Zach’s invention the Cluster Cluck 5000, which integrates livestock into row crop acres, as well as Jason’s distribution innovation with Munsee Meats. All three are very clear that the status quo is on a very bad track, and the only way it gets better is if YOU do something. ‌ Zack Smith is a farmer and entrepreneurial inventor from northern Iowa. He is co-founder of Stock Cropper, Inc - The Autonomous Livestock Grazing Company...an entity focused on building autonomous grazing barn systems to integrate multiple species of livestock intelligently back on to various landscapes. After spending the first 20 years of his career in commodity agriculture, he decided at age 42 to set it aside to focus on developing non-regressive paths for future of agriculture that create opportunities for more participants in the food system rather than fewer. Jason Mauck is a farmer and entrepreneur from Gaston,IN. Jason has developed an intense curiosity towards creating more complex agricultural systems. Systems that manage life with life. As the years progress his goal is to connect farmers with one another to learn together. He calls the movement #farmweird Nathan Gates is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.

Patrick (@RizomaAt) gets the keys to the podcast Ferrari to chat with @hi_frye and @butteryfur, Cozy Twitter power couple and  amateur construction enthusiasts.  The topic is their project of dreaming and scheming up their own tiny house, in which they now dwell. A DIY story that hits close to home, join us as we hear from the builders themselves about this tiny, but by no means small, accomplishment.

Paul, Alex and Ioan talk about searching for an intentional community, how to find the place and the people you can belong to, and community with the land you live on. Paul d'Aoust @helioscomm is a member of an unintentional intentional community, living, eating, making music, and gardening with hiswith his wife, kids, and in-laws on an acreage in western Canada. He is trying, usually falteringly, to live more deeply into communal living and all the joys and pains that come with it. Paul works with Holochain, a framework for building applications that support thriving communities by making it easy to set up community-owned infrastructure. Alex Wagner @alexdw5 is a writer. He publishes a weekly newsletter titled, Things That Should Exist, focusing on practical ways to build interdependence and resiliency in a changing world. He’s also a singer-songwriter and artist, publishing music under the moniker, Alex Time. https://thingsthatshouldexist.substack.com/ https://alextimer.bandcamp.com/album/demos-2022 Ioan @awarenesss is trying to build community on land: http://elkenmist.substack.com and in the city @bridgespacepdx Here are some thanks and links to  some of the people and inspirations that came up in the conversation: Dare Sohei from https://animistarts.art for the concept of secure attachment to land and other more than human beings. David Abram https://davidabram.org Ron Rivers https://singletruth.org

In this episode of Doomer Optimism, Brendan, Jim and Nate discuss the role that narrative and stories play in shaping the way we perceive the world around us and continually recreate the structures and processes that cohere to the narrative that we tell ourselves and each other about the world. We are narrative creatures at our core, and in our present time there are a great many competing stories that make making sense of the world and developing a coherent self-story particularly difficult. One solution to this is to live tightly in relationship with particular people and a particular place. Jim Jones is a PhD Candidate at University of Waterloo researching narrative, craft, skills, livelihoods, place, complexity. Spooncarver and hedgelayer. @skillsrural Brendan Barnard is passionate about stewardship, long term thinking, and the intersections of nature, art, and science, cider captured Brendan’s attention in 2016 and he hasn’t shaken it. When he’s not grafting, planting, pruning, picking, pressing, or sampling cider you’ll find him cooking for his family. Nathan is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.